
■/i^7 



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HEEP UPON 

THE UPLAND 

COTTON 

FIELDS, And 

Some Other Matters. 

An Address Prepared 
for Submission to the 
Southern Cotton Spin- 
n e r s ' Association at 
Their Meeting to be 
Held in Charlotte, N. 
C, May 14th and 15th, 

1903. H H 1 1 1 

By Edward ^ikin- 
SON, 0/ Massachusetts, 
LL. D. 0/ the State 
University of South 
Carolina. 

/Uh the complimen,,. 
ofMward Mkinson. 




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iCf^ 



6 



SHEEP UPON THE UPLAND COTTON FIELDS, 
AND SOME OTHER MATTERS. 



Gentlemen of the Southern Cotton Spinners' Association : 

When I first received the invitation to attend your meet- 
ing and to speak to you on the matter of insurance, I thought 
I would not risk the long railway trip, but would send my 
paper to be read to you. Later it occurred tO' me that here 
might be an opportunity to address you on the fundamental 
conditions underlying the whole cotton industry of the 
world, by the right development of which not only your cot- 
ton manufactures, but our own may be promoted, or by the 
neglect of which all may be retarded. 

The first opportunity ever given tO' a Northern anti-slave- 
ryman to speak words of truth and soberness to Southern men 
was, I believe, extended to me by the invitation tO' address a 
few of the leading men of your section in the Senate Cham- 
ber of Georgia, in 1880. 011 how to establish a cotton exposi- 
tion in all its parts. I decided to- make that address plain 
and simple, and under the guise of a cotton exposition to 
bring about an exhibit of the great potential of the South- 
land in mineral, timber and agriculture. In order to make 
this work effective I decided tO' draw the contrast between 
the past system of labor, the present and the future, from 
the standpoint of the economist who had always been an 
active opponent of slavery. You will observe that all the 
concepts of the political economist are and must be based 
upon personal liberty and upon the equal right of every man, 
without distinction of race or color, to achieve the highest 
position in art or industry that may fall within his capacity. 
That fundamental principle or rule of action needs to be 



re-stated to-day with all the force with which I endeavored 
to state it in the Senate Chamber of Georgia in 1880. 

My Southern friends imputed to me and to that speech 
more credit than I should ever dare take to myself, for the 
influence which it had in opening new lines of progress 
throughout the Southland. As I am now long past the three 
score years and ten of active life, I may yet more surely ad- 
dress you, perhaps pointing out some of your shortcomings 
without giving offense. But if ofTense be taken toward one 
who' simply stands fast upon the principle of liberty estab- 
lished by the great statesmen of the South as well as the 
North, in tiie early history of this country, then let him 
take warning of the fateful significance of his position. He 
will be wrecked if he dashes himself against the rock of lib- 
erty. I[ may even happen, on the other hand, as I once 
said in a great public meeting in Atlanta, that the children 
of Confederate soldiers may sometime erect a bronze statue 
to John Brown on the heights of Harper's Ferry in token 
of the liberty which he brought to the w^hite men of the 
South. Within three months after that speech a most re- 
markable article, written by an ex-Confederate officer, ap- 
peared in the "Century" magazine on that very subject, the 
emancipation of the white men of your section. 

Can I go any farther in challenging your attention ? There 
can be no limited or partial application of the principle of 
liberty in a nation which is founded on that principle. Lin- 
coln said, "No natioii can exist half free and half slave." 
It is equally true that while a section may continue to exist 
in a feeble and fitful way, half enfranchised and half dis- 
franchised, it can never thrive or prosper to the full meas- 
ure of its resources, but will languish for years as the Island 
of Jamaica did. When the slaves of the British Islands were 
emancipated the owners were compensated and were endow- 
ed with the entire power of legislation. Their main inter- 
est was in their sugar plantations and their sugar factories, 
in which the work of the laborer was arduous in the ex- 
treme and but ill paid. The emancipated negroes left these 
works, established themselves all over the island on little 



plots of land, where they followed the smaller arts of culti- 
vation, picking- pimento, raising their own supplies. They 
were well housed according tO' their standard ; they beg-an to 
prosper, but the exports of the island diminished and the 
great sugar factories were short of operatives. What hap- 
pened? The white planters controlling legislation turned 
ihe whole power of taxation against the colored workmen, 
taxing their roofs, taxing their windows, putting differential 
taxes on their imported supplies, and in this way tried to 
force them back into the sugar factories. What ensued? 
The ruin of the island for half a century. Yet of late, in 
spite of .the continued existence of differential taxes, that 
island has begun to prosper since the Yankees developed its 
resources, gaining slowly and surely in the common welfare 
of the masses of the people, while the sugar plantations have 
all gone to ruin. Only within the present year have those 
differential taxes been adjusted toi the new" conditions. 

What is Chamberlain proposing in South Africa except 
the same thing, namely, to put hut taxes and other taxes 
upon the colored inhabitants, in order to make it necessary 
for them to earn money with which to pay their taxes, and 
thus indirectly force them into the mines. That plan will 
fail as every plan must fail economically which is not con- 
sistent with justice, equal rights and liberty under equal 
laws. Whatever the conditions of the franchise may be, no 
State or section will attain the full measure of its prosperity 
where any effort is made to draw that distinction on the 
color line. 

Now rebuke me if you please for bringing politics into 
a business meeting, but before you do' sO' let me ask you, 
what is business? It is the conduct of commerce, manufac- 
tures, agriculture and the exchange of products, product 
for product, service for service. It rests on mutual benefit 
and mutual interest. And what are politics? The conduct 
of the business of government ; the making of laws ; the 
establishment of liberty and equal rights, to the end that the 
mutual benefits and opportunities may be shared by all, rich 
and poor, black and white, so that each according tO' his 

5 



ability and opportunity may attain whatever standard of 
welfare his intelligence and character entitle him to. 

Gentlemen of the South, it was in similar terms that 1 ad- 
dressed the leading men of Georgia and South Carolina in 
the Senate Chamber of Georgia, in 1880. It is on these plain 
terms that 1 have spoken and written many times in many 
places in your Southland. This is probably the last time I 
shall have the opportunity to speak within your boundaries. 
I am now addressing- men of capacity and intelligence, the 
leaders of the new industries of the New South, to whom 
1 may ai)peal, admitting that in some respects the men who 
are within and who are engaged in the great problem which 
must be solved, may have knowledge that I do not possess ; 
but also asking you to bear in mind that one who- is accus- 
tomed to the impartial and unprejudiced scientific investiga- 
tion of economic problems often gets a broader view and a 
more accurate conception of general truths than those who 
are in the heat of what may be called a great industrial as 
well as social contest. You may be assured that one prin- 
ciple is supreme : 

"You may take the sun out of the sky 
Ere Freedom out of man." 

We know the stupendous difficulties which are imposed 
upon you. We know that our ancestors are responsible as 
well as yours. We attempt neither to dictate nor to control. 
We rest assured that justice will be done by the true leaders 
of your great Southland. You have our sympathy, and 
we can only make suggestion. There will be errors on your 
part, and there will be errors on our part. Not in less than, 
a century of liberty will .the wrongs of more than two cen- 
turies of slavery be redressed. We know from our own ex- 
perience and from the difficulties w^hich the enormous immi- 
gration of ignorant foreigners impose upon us, that this 
problem is one of the most profoundly difficult, but you may 
rest assured that no such question can ever be settled by 
compromise with wrong, and nothing will ever be establish- 
ed except that which is right. 

6 



One suggestion 1 may make at this point. Large sums 
of money are being contril>uted in aid of Southern educa- 
tion. Fears are expressed that the contributors may not ad- 
just the conditions tO' those which you are assumed to com- 
prehend more fully than those who' give the money. I think 
there need be no such fears, and some of the objections al- 
most seem to indicate a fear lest the poor black, eager for 
schooling, should for a time attain a better material position 
than the poor white, who has not yet had even as good an 
opportunity as the black. 

Now let us glance over the conditions which have enabled 
the great Western and Southwestern States like Oklahoma, 
to build school-houses even in advance of suitable dwellings 
for those whose children are to attend the schools. Virginia, 
North Carolina, South Carolina and I believe Georgia and 
other States surrendered to the nation a great part of the 
western and northwestern territory. When the nation began 
to dispose of these public lands large areas were wisely re- 
served to enable the settlers to establish schools. From these 
resources more than sixty million dollars have been derived 
and expended in the construction of school-houses, while the 
Southern States that gave over to the nation the title to this 
vast territory have received nothing or next to nothing. You 
have a claim of right, not of charity, that the avails of pu'b- 
lic lands, still coming in in very considerable amounts, shall 
be assigned by the nation to you, in order to enable you to 
establish popular education in the cotton kingdom as fully as 
it has been established in the West. Texas retained her pub- 
lic lands and has the greatest potential endowment for school 
purposes of any State in the Nation. Why do you not combine 
in demanding of the nation your share in the avails of these 
public lands, in some measure equal to the share which has 
been devoted to common schools in the great West? New 
England will aid yon and I doubt not the Middle States 
would support you in this demand, which would be of right. 

Now with this introduction, which it seemed fit that some 
one should put before the thinking men of your States, I will 
submit to yon a plain statement of the reasons why you 



ought to fold sheep on your partially exhausted cotton fields 
in this upland or Piedmont district. 

The last counsel that our great War Governor, John A. 
Andrew, gave tO' his friends a little before his death in 1866, 
was tO' enter upon "the vigorous pursuit of peace in our rela- 
tions with the Southern States." I have always kept that 
counsel in view in my Southern addresses. 

It happened that when I first spoke in the Senate Cham- 
ber of Georgia I almost unwittingly gave utterance tO' a 
statement from which the cotton seed oil industry was pres- 
ently generated. I said that if we had possessed a variety of 
the cotton plant producing nO' fibre but only seed, it would 
long since have been one of the most valuable crops in the 
United States. It seemed to me the statement of a most 
obvious fact, but it proved that to my hearers it was a most 
startling almost incredible suggestion. What have we wit- 
nessed since 1881 in the utilization of cotton seed? I need 
not measure it in money or attempt to measure its impor- 
tance. 

Sheep on the cotton field will yield yet greater results. The 
last time I had occasion tO' speak to a picked body O'f men 
was at the last Atlanta Exposition, where I went with the 
late editor of the Philadelphia "Times." Our friends of 
Georgia and South Carolina gave us a reception, and after 
we had been treated with the usual vSoutliern hospitality and 
had passed our compliments tO' each other in mutual admira- 
tion according to the customary method on such occasions, 
one of my Southern friends called out, "This isn't your way, 
Atkinson; hit us, you always do." To which I replied, "But 
I am ycnu" guest; this is not the right occasion." "Oh," he 
rejoined, "we give you leave. You always hit straight from 
the shoulder, and we get some good sense." "All right," 
said I, "if you give me leave I will hit." I then proceeded. 

"I have come down again through your Piedmont district, 
witnessing the vast improvements that you have made in 
less than a single generation since the devastation of war, 
but casting my thought toward the future I still witness one 
great deficiency. I advise you to return to your respective 

8 



capitals and by act of legislation take off the palmetto from 
the State seal of South Carolina and the emblems of jus- 
tice from the State seal of Georgia, substituting a yellow 
dog rampant, with the motto, "Cave Canem." The dog rules 
you, and so long as that is the case you can attain nothing" 
like the position in agriculture to which your soil, climate 
and conditions entitle you. I am informed that every poor 
man keeps two dogs and every d — n poor man has four. Un- 
til you muzzle those dogs you cannot put sheep upon your 
cotton fields or upon your mountains or your valleys with 
any sense of security." 

Well, they threw up their hands and admitted that I had 
hit them in a very tender spot. I do not know what prog- 
ress you have made since then. I do' know that you have 
improved your cattle and that you are developing a big cat- 
tle industry in the mountains of Virginia and North Caro- 
lina. I do^ know that improved breeds of sheep are pervad- 
ing Western Virginia, some parts of Virginia proper and 
I believe some parts of North Carolina. You know more 
about that than I do-. But I wish to bring you down to the 
Piedmont upland district, where you may attain as para- 
mount a control over the production of the fine clothing' 
wools of the world as you have attained in the production 
of cotton in the cotton States. You may leave the long wool 
sheep and the sheep that can only be gathered in small flocks 
for the mountain valleys and for the hillsides, turning your 
attention to the merino and the cross breeds that can be fold- 
ed together in large numbers and can be used in the most 
effective manner for renovating the partially exhausted sur- 
face soil of this great Piedmont district. 

Can I be mistaken ? What are the requisite conditions for 
the production of fine clothing wools or merino breeds of 
sheep? Are they not a light soil, well drained', where the 
sheep will be free from foot rot; a climate not too hot in 
summer or through long periods to make the wool hairy, not 
too cold to require the housing of the sheep in winter; suf- 
ficiently fertile soil to yield ample food products to carry the 
sheep through periods when the grass has been consumed or 



dried away; freedom from excessive storms, and comforta- 
ble conditions for those who' care for the flocks? There will 
be of course the difficulties which are met with in all sheep 
growing. There are special diseases, but there are specific 
remedies for nearly every type of such disease, while others 
are sure tO' be found. If such are the conditioiis, are they 
not the exact and special conditions of the Piedmont Plateau 
and of the uplands of Georgia? I only know this subject 
by theory and by study. You ought to know it a great deal 
better than I do. What reply have you to make to my ques- 
tions ? Why do you not make wool upon your cotton fields 
and renovate your lands by putting sheep upon them ? 

I may venture to quote to you, as I did to your friends in 
Georgia in 1880, the dictumi of a Southern man on the old 
process of raising cotton and other crops. Governor Wise 
rendered the verdict on agriculture as it was, when he said 
that "the niggers skinned the land and the white men skin- 
ned the niggers." You have not fully surmounted the evil 
of that skinning of the land. That is proved by the relative- 
ly very small ratio of stock in the Atlantic Cotton States as 
compared to the aggregate product of your fields and as com- 
pared to the quantities of stock that are carried in other agri- 
cultural districts. If you study carefully the details of the 
census you will find that the progress and prosperity of agri- 
culture correspond tO' the proportion of cattle, hogs and 
sheep that are maintained on the farms from which the other 
great commercial crops are drawn, the fertilizers made on 
the farm being restored to the soil, or in some cases, as in 
Massachusetts and a few other Eastern States, the fertilizers 
drawn from the great cities as well as that supplied by stock 
upon the farms being applied to the maintenance of the soil 



( r even to the making- of the soil. 



It is an error to assume that agriculture is a lost art in 
New' England. The products of the field, of the pasture and 
of the market garden were never so large in proportion to 
the population of Massachusetts as they are now. Our crops 
per acre of Indian corn far exceed the average of your 
Southern field corn, and there are in the neighborhood of 

10 



our cities acres and acres of glass by the hundred under 
which early crops are made. These are the most prorttable 
acres of land, on which a thousand dollars a year may be 
spent in fertilizers and in cultivation. 

I have therefore again called attention tO' your great op- 
portunity to renovate the uplands of this whole section from 
here to Northern Alabama and Mississippi inclusive, by 
folding sheep upon your partially exhausted cotton fields. 
You are being obliged to go to the bottom lands in Missis- 
sippi and to Texas for the long-staple cotton to use in your 
fine work, when if you would give as much and as intelligent 
study and put as much work intO' yonr fields as you are jjut- 
ting intO' your factories, you would raise all the long-siapled 
and strong-stapled cotton that you need, right from here 
throughout the Piedmont section. What will vou do about 
it? 

Before replying to this question I desire to call your at- 
tention tO' certain curiously similar conditions in Great 
Britain about a hundred and fifty and in the Southern States 
about fifty years ago, and to the utterly different conditions 
prevailing in New England and the West in the conduct of 
agriculture. When in the latter part of the last century 
Arthur Young introduced the cultivation of the turnip into 
Great Britain, in order to sustain sheep folded upon the 
fields, the aristocracy of Great Britain, being the great land 
owners, were a class of thoroughly intelligent, progressive 
men who owned the land and supplied the capital to the ten- 
ant farmers, also a very intelligent class. But Hodge, the 
peasant, was anything but intelligent; he was and is a clod- 
hopper, without prospect of elevation above his present con- 
dition; instructed by parson and .the owner to learn that 
where his lot had been cast therewith to be content — the 
most obnoxious sentiment that ever retarded the progress of 
a State or people. Under these conditions the ideas which 
Arthur Young brought over from Holland were at once 
adopted by the introduction of the sheep, not for the direct 
purpose of raising wool and mutton, but for the main pur- 
pose of renovating the land and bringing it to its highest 

II 



condition of production in grain and food crops. From that 
date the agriculture of Great Britain has rested upon the 
sheep. intelHgently developed as compared to the older peri- 
ods when, although wool was a main product of Great Bri- 
tain, it was roug'h, hairy and poor by comparison. Yet you 
o'bserve that the higheM officer of the judiciary of Great Bri- 
tain, the Lord Chancellor, sits upon the wool sack as the em- 
blem of the nation. 

Now what were the corresponding conditions in the South 
in agriculture under the old conditions ? An aristocracy of 
high character and intelligence, conducting their plantations 
with the greatest po'ssible intelligence and applying the best 
methods that circumstances and ignorant labor would per- 
mit, without the intervention of tenant farmers between 
them and the laborers, but with the assistance of overseers. 
The laborers upon the cotton field, of necessity, possessed a 
less measure of intelligence or hope of industrial progress 
than the peasants of England. The growers of cotton pos- 
sessed an unwholesome monopoly of the production of cot- 
ton ; they thought it was king when it was not and never had 
been. The best thing that could happen to the cotton grow- 
ers of the South today would be for good government tO' be 
established in the Argentine Republic. They might then be 
subjected to a really serious competition in the effort to sup- 
ply the world with cotton of the green seed or common vari- 
eties. Egypt can never do it. Her capacity has reached its 
maximum. Egyptian cotton supplements our American; 
it does not compete. India can never compete. Africa can 
never do it. Central Asia can in a small way, for the supply 
of Russia. Having too great monopoly of the crop and too 
wide an area of land, your progress in the cotton field and 
in the handling of the cotton itself is not what it should be 
and not what it would be if you were subjected tO' a reasona- 
ble and intelligent competition. 

That former method of great plantations went out. The 
new methods, the new men and the New Soiith have been 
developed. You will develop the growing and handling 
of cotton, the renovation of your fields and the support of 

12 



all your own mills in this district, in just proportion to y(jur 
development of common intellig-ence among the masses uf 
the community. You will succeed in renovating land and in 
the introduction and protection of sheep only by muzzling 
the cur dog, and that requires intelligence among the masses. 

Western agriculture is being subjected to- a complete revo- 
lution under the influence of the Agricultural Experiment 
stations. The old methods of growing sod crops, dealing 
with the land as a mine subject presently to exhaustion, have 
gone by. The sons of the pioneers, bred in an intelligent 
manner and possessing more ample capital, have turned to 
intensive farming. They are dealing with the soil as a lab- 
oratory that wdll yield product in just proportion to the men- 
tal energy and intelligence which is applied to its use. With 
this application of common sense, general and widely dif- 
fused intelligence and the new methods of science, the pro- 
ducts of the great prairies of the West and Northwest have 
been enormously augmented, the cost has been diminished 
and the number of workmen tO' the ratio' of the product has 
also been greatly diminished by the substitution of mechan- 
ism for manual work. 

All this has rested for its possibility upon the common 
school and upon the preparation of every boy and girl to take 
an intelligent part in the development not only of agriculture, 
but of every industry that pervades the great Western and 
Southwestern States. But with this progress, land has be- 
come too valuable for wool growing, and the product of 
hens' eggs in Ohio is worth twice as much as the wool clip. 

I, therefore, press this problem before you — sheep upon 
the cotton fields, mainly for renovating the land and doubling 
the cotton crop in one or two years, adding the wool clip and 
the mutton as an incident. I have submitted several times a 
project to set apart a field of four hundred acres to be sur- 
rounded by a seven-row, dog-proof, barbed-wire fence; to be 
cut into four sections by cross divisions. In the middle a 
place reserved for the farm buildings, the cotton gin and 
press and other appliances, opening into each field. When I 
first planned this the fencing would have cost tweh-e hun- 

13 



dred dollars ($I2,ocxd). I then proposed to plant the land, 
one field in cotton, one in corn, one in cow peas, and to put 
sheep on the fourth field, feeding from within or without, 
as might happen. The next year move each crop, bring the 
sheep over to the cotton field and put cattle and hogs into 
some part of the area. In this way I held that the land 
would be renovated; meat would be provided; sheep, wool 
and cattle for sale while the cotton crop would be doubled. 
Booker Washington has taken this up; don't let him get 
ahead of you. 

I have examined all the records in DeBow's Review and 
all the evidence that can be attained, and I can find no reason 
why this system should not be adopted upon the uplands of 
your Piedmont district, except the incapacity of the farmers 
and the ignorance of the field hands, both white and black. 
If I have put that too harshly, correct me. There are, of 
course, a large number of men who are fully competent to 
establish this system — men here before me who' can do it if 
they will. What prevents you ? Is there anything unrea- 
sonable, visionary or dangerous in such a simple proposition, 
which you can easily correct or vary, knowing the special 
conditions better than I do? Do I know the general condi- 
tions better than you do or not ? Does the man who- stands 
6utside sometimes get a broader view and a more accurate 
measure of what can and ought to be done than those who 
are in the middle of the struggle ? I believe that is often the 
case, and having touched upon that and having long since 
begun to study the potential of this great Southland, begin- 
ning even in 1861 with the issue of an absolutely prophetic 
pamphlet on ''Cheap Cotton by Free Labor," in which 
pamphlet I also laid down the whole future of the cotton 
seed oil industry in all its details, when there was but one 
mill pressing cotton seed in the whole United States, and 
that was done secretly for the conversion of the oil into 
olive oil — what I remark now is that you have entered upon 
the cotton industry more skilfully and more successfully in 
the making. of cotton fabrics than you have in dealing with 
and preparing the cotton for the factory. The cotton crop 

14 



as a whole has deteriorated. It is not as well handled or as 
well ginned as the cotton produced on the large plantations 
was handled and sent to market under the former conditions. 
The public ginneries are run at high speed for the largest 
possible out turn, and are injuring the cotton year by year 
more than it was injured in former days. You have made 
slight progress in improvement in baling. With the excep- 
tion of American wool, American cotton is more wastefully 
dealt with in the primary processes and in getting it tO' mar- 
ket than any other important staple of the world. American 
wool is worse yet. Under the obstructive influence of the 
present tariff the consumption of wool by the people of the 
United States has been reduced from nine pounds to six 
pounds per head. The effort to keep out foreign wool has 
totally failed, as anyone who knew anything O'f the subject 
predicted that it would fail, but its cost has been doubled by 
taxation. The American wool cannot be successfully used 
in a large part of the fabrics now made without the admix- 
ture of foreign wools, especially the Australian and Argen- 
tine, in order to compete with foreign manufacturers who 
have woo'l free of tax. 

Under these conditions the production of wool, which is 
but a fraction of one per cent, in value on the total value of 
our farm products, has diminished in the farming States. 
It has increased only in the far Northwest, where great 
flocks of what have become known as the "hoofed locusts" 
are roaming over and destroying the cattle ranges, grazing 
over the mountains and the hillsides, destroying the grass, 
destroying the trees and even destroying the soil on which 
trees might again grow ; thus altering the conditions of the 
flow of water in the great rivers on which the Middle West 
depends. These flocks of "hoofed locusts" are doing infinite 
damage, while sending to market dirty, turdy,ba\lly-handled, 
badly-picked wool, of which no buyer can trust a sample, but 
is obliged to throw every fleece before he sends it to his fac- 
tory. This is the evil influence of efforts to protect a home 
industry of this kind. You are not protected by a duty, but 
by too great a monopoly of the cotton supply. Here is the 



open tielcl for you to compete freely with the world, without 
any tax upon the foreign wool if you can get it removed. 
Yoii can raise w^ool in the Piedmont district, beating the ter- 
ritorial wools in quality and cjuantity, and beating Australia, 
where within the last five years one-third of the whole body 
of the great flocks of sheep have been destroyed by drought. 
You now pay double price for your sham woolen fabrics and 
get shoddy at that. That is what is called protection to the 
wool grower. 

One great difficulty in your Southland is that the condi- 
tions of your labor are too arduous, the hours are too long 
and the wages or earnings in the field, the workshop and the 
factory are too low for the most efTecti\'e work and the low- 
est cost of labor by the unit of product. I have spoken of 
this many times before, and wdien I once uttered these words 
at a meeting where Governor Gordon, of Georgia, was pres- 
ent, he sent for me to come to his house in the evening. He 
told me that when I said the words, "short hours, high 
wages and low cost of production," he though I was crazy, 
but on reflection he had come to the conclusion that I was 
right. No' one can fail tO' come to that conclusion. If you 
work 0'perati\'es in the factory on modern, high speed ma- 
chinery over-long hours, you make second quality cloth, and 
you will rapidly destroy their nervous energ}^ You wear out 
your machinery without knowing it, and your temporary in- 
crease in the margin of profit will be of short duration. When 
I was in charge of cotton factories, one large mill in Maine 
was worked under my supervision ii hours a day; another 
in Massachusetts, on very similar goods, ten hours a day. 
We made more money in the Massachusetts mill than we 
did in the mill in Maine. I am and have long been satisfied 
that ten hours a day five days in the week, and six hours for 
Saturday is more profitable than any other system, and as 
time g'oes on you will all come to that conclusion. 

Now on high rates of wages and low cost by the unit of 
product : Reflect upon it for a moment. In all these arts, 
whether in the field, the forest or the factory, to which mod- 
em invention and mechanism have been applied, it requires 

i6 



intelligence, aptitude and gumption to get the best results out 
of them. When you get, the best results and the largest 
product, you can afford to pay the highest rates of wages 
that the force of the product will permit in order to lessen 
the cost of your production by employing only skilled work- 
men. I have traced this rule in more than fifty arts over 
more than fifty years. It is invariable, and while I do not 
wish to boast of old Massachusetts, I may venture to say that 
on the whole the rates of wages are hig-her in our fields, in 
our workshops and in our factories than they are elsewhere. 
When yoii think that you have got a lower cost of production 
because you have lower rates of wages, you may be well as- 
sured that it won't last, and that in proportion as your oper- 
atives become intelligent they will inevitably drift away to 
that point or place or section, whether in cotton spinning, 
wood-working or anything else, where the conditions are 
best; where the schools are most adequate; where the stand- 
ard of life is the highest ; and where the wages are the high- 
est. At that point the work will be done at the lowest cost 
of production by the unit of the yard, the pair of boots, the 
pound, or the bushel. 

But again, where is your principal home market? Ninety 
per cent, of the persons who are occupied for gain in this 
country, each of whom supports nearly two others, are wage 
earners or are on small salaries or are working on farms 
with their farm hands. Among these multitudes is the great 
demand for yoiir fabrics and products of every kind. The 
demand of the millionaire is but a trifle as compared to the 
demand of the millions. Now when wages are high, the 
hours of labor moderate and the intelligence of the people 
and the standard oi living well developed, the demands for 
the comforts as well as for the necessities of life will be the 
greatest, and there yoit will find the biggest market. Now 
until down here in the Southland you have put all your en- 
ergies into elevating the standard of life, developing the abil- 
ity and the working capacity and enhancing the wages of the 
poor whites and the poor blacks alike by d-eveloping greater 
.ability, leaving the social question to take care of itself, you 

17 



will have a very limited domestic market for the meanest 
kind of goods that can be made. When you reach the stand- 
ard of our old Commonwealth of Massachusetts in your ap- 
propriations for schools and in the development of the best 
conditions for your working people, you may be able to- refer 
to your records and show as we do, that about every other 
person, one in two (about 1,600,000), of the population of 
the State has an average deposit in a savings bank of the 
safest kind of $350; the total amount according to the re- 
port just rendered to the Legislature being but little short 
(jf $600,000,000 last year, now exceeding that sum — three 
quarters of which or more belongs tO' the boot and shoe mak- 
er?, the clothiers, the factory operatives, the domestic ser- 
vants, and yet more to the great multitude of intelligent 
mechanics occupied in the lesser industries, whose products 
are greater in the aggregate than that of any single group 
of factories and in whose work mental and manual energy 
are developed in the man and the woman by the very process 
of the work itself. 

Think of this for a moment. In every branch of industry 
— on the farm, in the forest, in the mine, in the workshop 
or the factorv, wherever modern science and invention have 
changed the methods of production, intellig-ence must be 
developed in corresponding- measure. That intelligence will 
give the clear perception that the wDrkman is worthy of his 
hire in proportion to his or her own skill and aptitude. 
That will set men and women thinking about their relative 
opportunity, leading them to try to find the best place and 
the best conditions for their children — and this development 
may be found among the lowly as well as among the higher 
departments of industry. 

Not long ago T met on the New York boat a colored 
man, on his way from Virginia to Connecticut. It was in 
the early autumn. I fell into talk with him; asked him 
where he was going. He said he was going to one of the 
large workshops in Connecticut, where he had a perma- 
nent job every winter for about seven months out of the 
year. His wife and children lived in one of the sleepy 



toAvns on the James river, where he owned a Httle place, and 
where he spent his summer. I asked him why he did not 
stay in Virginia all the year round and develop some kind 
of good work there, to which he replied: "No chance dar, 
boss; dey ain't got no energy roun' dar. We raises our 
corn and meat and den I goes up to Connecticut where I 
can make some money." Said I, "How long are you going 
to keep this up?" "Not much longer, boss. Tse bought 
a small farm in Connecticut; I'se paying for it. When I 
get out of debt, den I moves my fam'ly up into Connecticut 
— good schools dar for de chdllun; ain't none such in Vir- 
ginia." 

Now suppose you reason a bit on that story, which is 
typical of the movement of intelligent labor to the most 
favorable points. You need the work of every worker, with- 
out regard to race or color, in these Atlantic States. You 
need not only to keep what you have, but to bring workmen 
from outside. In the competition for laborers, Missouri, 
Oklahoma, the Indian Territory and Texas compete with 
you. all equally demanding the immigration of men com- 
petent to work on the fields, in the mines, the forests and 
the workshops, without regard to color. In these States 
there has been no interference with the equal rights of men. 
The head of the Village Improvement Society, who is 
modifying the conditions of a whole county in Texas, re- 
spected and supported alike by all his neighbors, is a colored 
man. Wherever individual capacity and character are rec- 
ognized, there is the proof of mental and material progress ; 
where "they are not recognized there is the proof of lack, 
both of mental and material progress. Those sections in 
which these factors are permitted to do their full work will' 
steadily and s'lowly and surely drain away from the unpro- 
gressive sections of the country all the most intelligent work- 
men, leaving only the drudges, who can do nothing better 
for themselves or for their State than to continue their 
ignorant and slovenly methods, especially in the conduct of 
agriculture. You hold out the most brilliant pictures of 
your great resources and of the opportunities that are offered 

19 



for their development along this whole section of the Atlan- 
tic Cotton States. But you are not alone in the possession 
of these great resources. Texas is a great undeveloped em- 
pire of almost untold resources. The cotton produced by 
free labor before the Civil War was rapidly increasing-, and 
in a short time the economy of free labor would have de- 
stroyed the costly slave-grown cotton of other sections, in 
the natural course of events. In that State there is no dis- 
tinction of race or color, except that which establishes itself 
in the social order. If let alone, men vote under such suit- 
able conditions as may be rightly established — South or 
North — as the condition of the suffrage without regard to 
race. In that State there is the most urgent demand for 
labor. It will drain neighboring- States if they do not give 
equal rights and equal opportunities. 

The Indian Territory is about to be opened. Oklahoma, 
opened only fifteen years ago, contains more than half a 
mijlion inhabitants, makes cotton as well as corn and every 
other product. In this great area, the two together fifty 
thousand square miles, a million laborers may be wanted. 
How did these settlers begin? Almost before they had 
sheltered themselves in their own dwelling houses they had 
begun to build very substantial school-houses, and there they 
stand — the primary, the grammar, the high school, the nor- 
mal school and the university ; solid, substantial buildings, 
dominating the section in which they are. Before these set- 
tlers had barely housed themselves in comfort or turned the 
sod, they had laid the foundation for common education 
from the primary school tO' the university. In this section 
the right of suffrage is conditional upon intelligence, but 
not upon color, and to that section colored men of standing 
and capacity will surely go. 

Which will be the first vState along the Athntic coist to 
find out that inequality in human rights doesn't pay? I 
venture to guess that it will 1>e the State that has sometimes 
been called the Yankee State of the South — Georgia — where 
presentlv the great economic force of equal rights and of 

20 



suffrage based on intellig'ence may get the first start toward 
the full development of its industrial forces. 

Gentlemen, it is neither land, nor mines, nor forests, nor 
factories that make the State; it is men who make the State, 
and in the exact proportion of their comprehension of the 
principle of liberty and of equal rights will be their mental 
energy, their moral standing and -their political sagacity. 

The State to which the most intelligent workmen and 
laborers will repair will be the State in which equality before 
the law is established and sustained by public opinion; in 
which equal opportunities for material progress are offered 
without distinction of color, because in that State the work- 
men will find the opportunity to earn the highest rates of 
wages that the market price of his product will warrant and 
yet make that product at the lowest cost of labor. That 
will also be the State in which capital will be abundant, 
banking most firmly established, the rate of interest the low- 
est, but the aggregate profits the largest, because in that 
State will be the greatest expansion of trade and commerce 
within its own boundaries and with other States. 

Yo'U have made more progress than you know toward the 
attainment of a high place in raising stock. When I first 
began to study the conditions of the cotton kingdom I found 
most intelligent statements in the essay of Dr. N. B. Cloud, 
of Alabama. What was his verdict at that time? He said : 
"You have gullied your hillsides and blasted your prairies, 
and being in possession of the best forage plants of the 
world, you have rendered yourselves dependent upon the 
North for hay to feed your cattle." All that is changed 
over an increasing section oi your agricultural district. The 
lespideza holds the soil on your hillsides; the cow pea in 
great variety is renovating the soil ; the soya bean, of which 
I imported a few bushels from China for the Atlanta Expo- 
sition of 1881, whence they were distributed in small par- 
cels, has become one of your great forage crops. All intelli- 
gent planters and farmers have put away the all-cotton 
theory, and with diversified agriculture have made great 
progress, but as yet nothing compared with what may be 

21 



.accomplished in the future. Fence laws and dog laws are 
beginning- to be enforced in many sections. Your cattle are 
being- bred with a view to the conditions of the Southern 
climate. One of Booker Washington's experts, who was at 
the Columbian Exposition of 1893, learning the secret of 
innocuiating- milk with the bacterium of June butter, is mak- 
ing excellent butter from Southern milk, supplying the 
markets of Mobile, Montgomery and other places in a way 
never attained before. But as yet, you have done nothing 
with sheep in the Atlantic Cotton States, where the supreme 
opportunity exists for supplying the fine wools of the world. 
Only contrast the wool industry of this country with that of 
Great Britain, where every county has its special breed, 
adapted to the exact conditions of that little county. I went 
once with the sheep breeder of another county to see some 
Oxford Down sheep that had taken the highest premium in 
all Great Britain. He was prepared to buy for breeding in 
his own county. The grower said I will sell you the sheep, 
but you cannot make Oxford Down wool in your county ; 
your breed is better adapted to your conditions. Down in 
Leicestershire, where the fields are divided by stone walls, 
Bakewell bred a short-legged sheep so that theyeould not 
leap over the walls. Think of the Southdown mutton, 
equalled in Kentucky if not excelled. Bear in mind the 
Shetland wools, the coarse fleeces of the Scotch moors, 
woven into the most durable Scotch tweeds, the most ser- 
viceable cloth that a man can wear out in the rain and over 
the hills, on which you must pay a tax of one hundred per 
cent, if you try to supply yourselves with such a foreign lux- 
urv. You can equal and excel! the wool product of Great 
Britain in quantity and variety whenever you apply as much 
intelligence to the art and work it out not only with the fine 
clothing wools on your upland section, but the long wools 
and the medium wools on yoiir hillsides and in yoiir moun- 
tam valleys. 

Georgia is larger than England and Wales, fifty-nine 
■thousand (59,000) square miles; North Carolina is larger 
than England, fortv-eight thousand six hundred (48,600) 



.square miles — each with less waste land. England has over 
twenty important breeds O'f sheejD — Leicester, Cotswold, 
Lincoln, Oxford Down, Shropshire, Hampshire Down, Suf- 
folk, Dorset Horn, Kent or Romney March, Devon Long- 
wool, Ryeland, Dartmoor, Exmoor, Wensleydale, Roscom- 
mon, Limestone, Black-faced Mountain, Lonk and Welsh 
Mountain. How many have you ? How many might you 
have? In two hundred miles of distance east and west, 
from the level of the coast lands in North Carolina, to the 
top of Roane Mountain, which our great botanist. Dr. Asa 
Gray, declared to be the most beautiful mountain in the 
world, are found the flora and the fauna of two thousand 
.miles of distance from the Gulf to the St. Lawrence. What 
are you doing with this domain? What are the names of 
the special breeds of sheep on the sandy lands of the piney 
woods ? What is the best cross-breed of the merino on your 
partially exhausted cotton and tobacco land? What is the 
•county name of your best long-wool sheep? I thought I 
heard some one say Buncombe. What will be the names 
after you have digested this address? 

But one thing let me beg of you — improve your breeds 
O'f cattle and sheep, but for heaven's sake don't ti"y to im- 
prove the razor-backed hog. I won't have any other ham 
in my house, and when properly cooked it beats every kind 
of pig meat that there is in the world. 

Gentlemen, under the guise of dealing with a merely ma- 
terial problem, I have ranged over a wide field. You may 
observe that every part of this treatise is bound in with the 
other, weaving the web that binds society together. If that 
web is not firmly woven, the three fates of the old myth may 
cut the strands and the end oi the life of the nation, the 
.State or the section will come. 

Again, let me enforce upon your minds the fundamental 
principle of political life, of social order and of material 
-prosperity. No nation, no State, no dominant race can 
permanently govern another, either by the force of arms or 
'by the force of legislation, without the gravest iniurv to 
n>oth. The race which submits to such government is emas- 

23 



dilated and deprived of its power of progress, even if for 
the time it may gain in mere material conditions. Witness 
the conditions of India at the present time. But the greater 
harm falls upon the dominant rulers, nation. State or race. 
The effect of this false system is almost invariably to gener- 
ate corruption, or else rulers become so arrogant as to ut- 
terly fail to comprehend the spirit or soul of the oppressed 
people whom they rule — they rely wholly on force to main- 
tain their control without regard to human rights, either 
individual or collective. 

You are at the parting of the ways in these Atlantic and 
Gulf Cotton States. The responsibility is upon you, and 
you cannot evade it. According to your decision wall be the 
welfare or the ill-fare of your Southland, and if you err the 
errors of the fathers will be visited upon the children even 
unto the third and fourth generations. 

Gentlemen, the one great lesson that I have learned in 
over sixty years of working life, including fifty years of 
close observation and study of affairs, is that the righteous 
force of commerce, which li^•es and moves and has its being 
in mutual service, will ultimately suppress the brutality of 
war and expose the folly of tariff wars. The four corner 
stones on which the great structure of this nation is founded 
are free men. free soil, free speech and free trade over a 
wider area and among a greater number of people within 
our own borders than ever enjoyed its benefits before among 
civilized States. With our expanding commerce, free trade 
with other nations, qualified only by the necessity of collect- 
ing a small customs revenue, will soon come. 

If every one of these corner stones is not laid firmly, the 
whole structure is for the time weakened. The base of all 
these foundations is common education and common sense, 
assuring industrial peace. Witness one incident to prove 
how the engines of w^arfare may be turned to the support 
of industr}\ Not long ago yon added a verse to the Scrip- 
tures. My old friend. General Wilder, not unknown tO' yoU 
!n North Carolina, engaged in thirteen great battles around 
Chattanooga, in one of which he charged and took a redoubt 

24 



that had spread death and destruction around it. In the 
intervals between the battles he studied the coal and the iron 
of that section, and as soon as the war ended he returned and 
established great iron works and on the hill he filled up the 
embrasures of the redoubt, making it a reservoir. You have 
heard of the old time, how they should convert their swords 
into ploug-hshares and their spears into pruning hooks, but 
in this instance the deadly site of war and destruction was 
converted intO' a fountain of living water to nourish the new 
industries of the new South. 

You may think that my prophecy of industrial peace is 
but a vision. Who first spoke those words, "peace and good- 
will" through long struggle to be attained ? 

"Peace, aye, to dwell with men. 
No strife, nO' wars; and then 
The coupled comfort of those golden hours. 

Shall these things come to pass ? 

Nay, if it be — alas ! — 
A vision, let us sleep and dream it true ; 

Or, sane and broad awake. 

For its great sound and sake, 
Take it. and make it Earth's, and peace ensue!" 



25 



APPENDIX 



To the Address of Bdzcard Atkinson, Upon "Sheep on the 
Cotton Fields." 



The slight discussion with Mr. B. W. Hunt, of Eatonton, 
Georgia, after this paper was read, taken in connection with 
the paper by Mr. Webber on the "Cotton Fibre," makes it 
suitable to add a few words to what was read. 

Mr. Hunt misapprehended the purport of the address, ap- 
parently assuming that my suggestion was to put foreign or 
Northern breeds of sheep and cattle upon Southern cotton 
fields, he stating what is a well-known fact, that when unac- 
climated sheep and cattle are moved to the Atlantic States 
they are subject to specific diseases, most of them dying; 
but in respect to animals in this case, as in Mr. Webber's 
history of the cotton plant and the pea-vine, a few escape. 
My suggestion was not to attempt to continue the foreign or 
Northern breeds, but to develop a breed, especially of sheep 
suited to the conditions of every section of every State, im- 
mune to the hazards of that particular soil and climate. 
Mr. Hunt spoke of his import of the fat-tailed sheep of 
Thibet, which I understood him to say had thriven. Why 
not cross that breed with an immune sheep of English blood? 
Why not import the hairy sheep from the calcareous soils of 
South America and of Asia from which we derive all our 
coarse carpet wools, and by crossing that breed with fine 
wool sheep of other blood, perhaps get a special breed of 
the highest value? It may be observed that the same law 
appears to govern the hybrids among plants as developed 
by Mr. Webber, as governs hybrids among animals. Some 
hybrids become stronger than either of the original types ; 
some weaker. All that is the matter that should be taken up 
by the Agricultural Experiment Stations in the Cotton 

26 



States until every section and every county has been in- 
structed in the right methods of renovating- the soil with 
acclimated or immune herds of sheep. 

Again, let me remark that the farmer who now sells cot- 
ton seed, as well as cotton fibre, is like Esau selling his 
patrimony for a mess of pottage. He is exhausting his land 
and becoming ignorantly dependent upon artificial fertilizers 
at heavy cost to restore what he has wasted by selling his 
seed. I have no recent analysis of the cotton fibre or of the 
cotton seed, but I may go back to my first investigations of 
the cotton plant, of which the results were printed in '"Cheap 
Cotton by Free Labor," in 1861, when I laid down the whole 
future of the co.tton seed oil industry. Going back to that 
and to the two analyses of seed therein given, it was proved 
that the cotton fibre consists almost wholly of carbonaceous 
material derived from the atmosphere. The oil is also car- 
bonaceous material drawn from the air. The mineral ele- 
ments derived from the soil are almost all contained in the 
kernel when freed oi oil and in the hulls of the seed. Disre- 
garding fractions, a bale of cotton fibre of five hundred 
{500) pounds will contain not over five (5) pounds of min- 
eral element drawn from the soil, while the seed from which 
that fibre has been removed contains nearly fifty (50) 
pounds, and that fifty pounds is in the kernel and the hull 
and not in the oil. These mineral elements consist of pot- 
ash, soda, lime, magnesia, phosphoric acid and a few other 
minor elements, for all of which high prices are paid for 
artificial fertilizers, while the cake made from the same field 
is largely exported tO' Europe to feed cattle and sheep in 
foreign lands. Could the force of ignorance any further go? 

Lest this view of the matter should not be accepted, com- 
ing from a Massachusetts man who- never saw a field of 
cotton until 1866, I venture tO' give the evidence of Dr. N. B. 
Cloud, of Alabama, to whose article I referred in my ad- 
dress. In 1850 or thereabout, the Governor of South Caro- 
lina consulted Dr. N. B. Cloud, of Alabama, on how to stop 
the waste of soil in South Carolina. Dr. Cloud's reply was 

27 



given in my pamphlet on "Cheap Cotton by Free Lal^or," 
from which I now copy : 

"Our own sage FrankHn, in his friendly advice to Poor 
Richard, has assured us 'that by constantly taking out of 
the meal tub and never putting in, we shall soon find the 
bottom/ Philosophically true, this — good homespun, sound 
doctrine; yet plain and simple as be this doctrine, the cotton 
planter knows it only in song — his acquaintance with this 
golden truth is theoretic only. His exhausted fields, and 
dwarfish puny cotton, tell tales more positively contradictory 
and gloomy than I have room or inclination to enumerate. 

"You nor 1, ni}- very dear sir. may never live tO' see the 
day when that -c'cry last man shall cease to lay his cotton 
rows up one hill and down another, thus draining off the 
vitality of his land every three or four feet, to the depth of 
his puny plough, or to waste the sure means of keeping up 
the fertility of his fields, by feeding his stock in the public 
roads. 

"The land is first ruined by the one-crop practice of cot- 
ton, then turned out to pasture. It soon runs together, pro- 
duces little grass and sustains poor stock. The difficulty is 
not so much in the injury, which the hungry stock did in 
grazing the pasture. ?s the ruinous system of culture, which 
prevented any pasture at all. Land under an improving 
system of culture is not thus affected. Under mv system, 
or any rne like it. furnishing the amount and value of pas- 
turage that it does, the raising and keeping of stock, mules, 
hogs ?nd cattle, necessary to supply the wants of the planta- 
tion, becrmes a source of absolute profit, the land is made 
rich and continues improving in the elements of fertility. 

"The rich compost manure applied to the land once every 
four years, in quantities sufficient to make a bale of cotton 
per acre, continues to improve the land, and thus increase 
aii:..i:'lly the grain crop and pasturage. All this is simple, 
plain ;rd practical. 

"This country is objected to by planters and others taking 
their cue from them, ou account of its 'short bite' and sterile 
pasturage, as they were pleased to call it. Nor has there 

28 



been a designed misrepresentation in this; it is the result of 
observation derived from the working of this universally 
draining system of growing cotton. Now the facts which 
my practice and observation under my system have demon- 
strated, are these: that no country is equal to this (Ala- 
bama) for good and 'long-nip' pasturage. Our climate is 
remarkably favorable to rich and luxuriant pasturage. The 
red man of the forest, and the pioneer white man that came 
here in advance of our scratching plough, tell us they found 
the wild oat and native grasses waving- thick, as high as a 
man's head, and so' entwined with the wild pea vine, as to 
make it difficult to ride among it, all over this country. 
Every cotton planter has heard of these tine primitive pas- 
ture ranges, and many have seen them. If the country or 
the climate has been cursed in our appearance as planters 
here, it has been in the wasting system that we introduced 
and continue to practice. 

"With a climate and soil peculiarly adapted to production 
of cotton, our country is also equally favorable to the pro- 
duction of all the necessary cereals, and as remarkably favor- 
able to the perfect development of the animal economy, in 
fine horses, fine active mules, good milch cows, superior 
sheep and hogs, and for fruit of every variety (not tropical) 
it is eminently superior. If this condition of things be fact, 
and I assert it to be such, why is it that we find sO' hiany 
wealthy cotton planters, whose riches consist entirely of their 
slaves and worn-out plantations? 

"In every other section of this country, north, east and 
west, the proceeds of the productive industry of the people 
in the grand aggregate are retained at home, while we, the 
planters of the South, producing annually, from a single one 
of our crops, $150,000,000, pay out the grand aggregate to 
others for bread, bacon and mules, all of which we may, 
under a proper system of plantation economy, grow at home, 
and thus we may also retain at home this large sum of gold, 
the substance of our fields, to be expended in home improve- 
ments. 

"I am entirely convinced, from my own experience in 

29 



making- manure, that it is not only practicable, but a per- 
fectly easy task to prepare, upon every plantation in the cot- 
ton region, great or small, 1,500 bushels of an excellent 
article of compost, per annum, to the hand, at a cost of less 
than tvvO' cents per bushel, by the assistance of the stock of 
horses, cows and hogs, upon properly arranged lots."* 

"It is immaterial what number of hands may work on the 
place; we allot to each twenty acres, and upon the condition, 
proceed to divide the land into four equal parts, adopting the 
system of four years' shift as best suited to our plantation 
economy. 

"In the next place, I fix the rotation, and shift thus : five 
acres to each hand in cotton, ten acres for grain, and five 
acres to lie fallow. I plant cotton on the same land once in 
four years, always on the fallow land, with a dressing of 
500 bushels comipost or stock-yard manure to the acre. 

"By the ist of July my cotton stands five tO' six feet 
high, and I have it topped by the loth. 

"Strictly follow this plain and simple process, and if the 
land does not reward your pains-taking, with five or six fold 
the quantity per acre, of a superior staple, than has at any 
previous year been taken from it, in its natural state, I will 
present the experimenter with one bushel of my improved 
seed, with which to perfect the experiment. 

"The constant and invariable success which attends this 
improvement in my hands, is the result of a strict and scrup- 
ulous adherence to system in its management. 

"Under a system affording such facilities for grain in 
abundance, rich pasturage for fat home-raised stock of every 
variety, and land improving annually in fertility, the culture? 
of cotton becomes a process of gardening, productive and 
remunerating. 



*NoTE. — At the time these letters were written, no 
method had been discovered for separating the shell from 
the kernel of the cotton seed, by which, and by pressing out 
the oil, the seed is made good food for stock. A cheap 
method has since been perfected. — E. A. 

30 



"In other words, after innumerable experiments and tests 
(from 1844 to 1856) this system has been adopted as the 
one best and surest, calculated to feed and clothe the oper- 
atives of the plantation, supply all the stock necessary to its 
various uses, improve annually and protect the fertility of 
the land, and leave at the end of each year, the proceeds of 
the cotton crop, as the clear profit of the plantation zvith all 
its outfit." 

On this statement I made the following remarks, in 1861 : 

Among other advantages freedom from disease and froin 
insects is promised as the result of Dr. Cloud's system. 

The great adaptation of a product requiring such culture 
consisting of small allotments rather than large plantations, 
will be evident as well as the absolute necessity of intelligent 
labor to bring- such a system of cultivation into general use. 

I have been waiting from 1861 tO' 1903 to witness the 
application of intelligent labor on small allotments, to the 
doubling of the cotton crop without increasing the area of 
land, and to^ the renovation of the soil which has only been 
skinned. I am now much nearer eighty than seventy. How 
much longer will it take before the prophecies which I have 
made of the future progress of the Southland in intensive, 
productive and profitable farming, by which cotton may be- 
come the surplus or profit crop, will be justified? 
Respectfully submitted, 

Edward Atkinson. 

Boston, May 21st, 1903. 



31 




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